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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23473912">The Sun Would Rise</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/roysauce/pseuds/roysauce'>roysauce</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(it won't all be angst but it starts on a low note), Action/Adventure, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Bisexual Character, Bisexuality, Canon Rewrite, Endgame ships have been tagged, Eventual Romance, F/M, Female Akira Kurusu, Female Protagonist, I'm covering all my bases here okay?, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rating May Change, as in, but I'm not going to be tagging characters until they appear, its hard for my ADD brain to handle tagging everything at once, no beta we die like men, now that the horrible shit is out of the way, so I'll be tagging everything else as it becomes relevant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:47:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,437</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23473912</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/roysauce/pseuds/roysauce</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A knock to the back of her head sends her to the pavement. A knee digs into the flesh between her shoulder blades as her arms are forced behind her back—something in her left shoulder pops loose; she screams, but they don’t care—and suddenly there are handcuffs tightening around her wrists with a sinister click and Akira doesn’t understand. </p><p>She didn’t do anything wrong.</p><p>[A rewrite of the P5 story with a female protagonist and a some other changes I wanted to explore (mostly to avoid the tedium of hashing out verbatim the same story we already know). Chapter 1 is the only instance of on-screen rape in the story and can be skipped if you would like. As of now, I have no plans to include anything from P5:Royal.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kurusu Akira &amp; Morgana, Kurusu Akira &amp; Phantom Thieves of Hearts, Kurusu Akira &amp; Sakura Sojiro, Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Niijima Makoto/Okumura Haru, Suzui Shiho/Takamaki Ann</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>238</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Introduction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><strong>TW:</strong> This chapter contains non-graphic depictions of rape and instances of police brutality. If you'd like, you can absolutely skip straight to the next chapter and still be able to understand what's going on. Take care of yourselves everybody.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     It happens quickly.</p><p>     One moment, Akira Kurusu is making her way home from the gym, mind set on the getting home and taking the world’s longest bath. The next- the next she’s being yanked into an alley by her ponytail and-</p><p>     Her face is smashed against rough brick- blood fills her mouth as her teeth cut into the inside of her cheek. Akira panics- forgets every self-defense lesson her uncle's ever given her, every spar she’s ever been in because those were for <em>sport </em>and she knew it was coming, and this is <em>real </em>and she hadn’t been expecting it, and it’s all happening <em>so fast</em> that all she can do is struggle to breathe as her brain races to catch up to-</p><p>     Akira’s breath hitches around a sob as her face is pressed harder into the wall- a pair of feet kick apart her legs, a hand rucking up the back of her skirt and all the sudden she <em>knows </em>with a visceral sort of terror just what’s happening- she’s not being mugged, no, she’s about to be-</p><p>     “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay quiet.” The voice is low, rasping, slightly slurred. He doesn’t sound close to her, but she can smell him- rancid, sour with cigarette smoke and saturated with booze.</p><p>     Akira screams- or tries to, as loudly as she can manage when her face is crammed against a wall and she can’t fully open her mouth.</p><p>     Her head is yanked back by her ponytail, smashed against the wall again, so hard that stars burst behind her eyes and then- then it’s <em>happening </em>and twelve years of martial arts classes suddenly mean <em>nothing, </em>because she’s so scared she can’t <em>move </em>let alone <em>fight back</em>, and-</p><p>     She doesn’t know how long it goes on- seems to fade in and out of awareness in waves, trying to scream in places only to have her face smashed into the brick again until she quiets down, but- finally, <em>finally</em>, after what feels like forever, Akira hears sirens.</p><p>     The man behind her swears, pulls away from her, bashes her face against the brick in what seems to be sheer frustration before finally letting go of her ponytail and letting her trembling body crumple to the ground. Through her eyelids, Akira can she the blue and red flashing lights, and she’s never been more <em>relieved, </em>but then-</p><p>     Then the man is <em>talking to </em>them and they’re <em>listening</em> and she’s- she’s just <em>laying there</em>, bloody and broken and more filthy than she’s ever felt in her life and they don’t even seem to <em>care</em>.</p><p>     Akira must pass out at some point, because then she’s waking up rough hands grabbing at her arms and pulling her to her feet- and Akira <em>refuses</em>, she refuses to let it happen <em>again </em>so she screams, lashes out, kicks and bites and scratches anything that comes near her.</p><p>     A knock to the back of her head sends her to the pavement. A knee digs into the flesh between her shoulder blades as her arms are forced behind her back—something in her left shoulder pops loose; she screams, but they don’t care—and suddenly there are handcuffs tightening around her wrists with a sinister <em>click </em>and Akira doesn’t understand.</p><p>     She didn’t do anything wrong.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     It happens quickly.</p><p>     Prostitution, assault, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer—they list Akira’s alleged crimes, and after everything that transpired between the alleyway and the station, she doesn’t even have it in her to say anything in her defense.</p><p>     She just sits there, feeling for all the world like she’s been hollowed out at the core.</p><p>     She speaks to her father on the phone, afterwards- or, her father speaks, and she listens. Akira doesn’t remember anything he says to her, only remembers the sound of her step mother yelling in the background and how much her face hurt.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     It happens quickly.</p><p>     The trial lasts barely an hour. Akira isn’t really all that present—hasn’t really been since her face was smashed up against the outside of a building and she was told to be quiet—but she doesn’t think there’s even a proper jury put together. Just the judge and a handful of people in suits.</p><p>     They talk and they talk and they talk, and Akira stops listening around the same time her lawyer stops being on her side.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     It happened quickly, as all life-altering events seem to.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This will hopefully be the only chapter in which any rape/non-con happens on screen, but the events of this chapter will be referenced throughout the fic as Akira comes to grips with what happened and gradually works to move past it, so I'm not counting brief one or two sentence flashbacks out quite yet to be safe.</p><p>This is my first foray into the Persona 5 fandom, so any feedback would be super appreciated! (Because of the sensitive nature of the subject matter this fic is built upon, however, I will be moderating comments. Thank you for understanding!)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. April I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Labeled a ‘<em>flight risk</em>’ by the system that failed her, Akira is kept in a holding cell leading up to and following her trial as they—whoever ‘<em>they</em>’ are—make arrangements, but time passes in a blur.</p>
<p>     Akira can count on one hand the number of times she leaves her cot voluntarily.</p>
<p>     Nobody visits her.</p>
<p>     She hasn’t seen her father once since this whole thing started.</p>
<p>     On the day she’s meant to leave, they try to get her to change into the uniform of the school she’ll be attending before they ship her out, but Akira takes one look at the skirt that would barely cover her ass and refuses to budge until they bring her a pair of proper pants.</p>
<p>     In the end, the best she’s able to get is a knee length variant of the skirt and a pair of stretchy black leggings to don beneath it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>XXX</p>
<p> </p>
<p>     The train ride into the city is almost too much.</p>
<p>     Too many people, packed together far too closely; the idea of leaving her back open makes it feel like the walls are closing in on her.</p>
<p>     Nearly three weeks have passed since That Night, but Akira’s face is still a mess. Tinted a sour yellow-green on the right side, light purple staining her cheekbone and brow-ridge. The arch of her nose is split from where the man had bashed her face into the brick that one last time, and there’s an angry, partially-scabbed scrape on the underside of her chin from when she’d been thrown to the pavement.</p>
<p>     People point, and stare, and whisper, thinking they’re oh-so-discreet.</p>
<p>     Akira finds a seat in the back corner of the car and tries to melt into it, distract herself with her phone, having just gotten it back from evidence lockup before she was sent off.</p>
<p>     None of her friends have tried to contact her since her arrest.</p>
<p>     There’s a series of voicemails from the house phone left by her half-sister in the days following her arrest, though, all recorded in hushed, worried tones—where is Akira? Why does her mom get angry when she asks? Did they get into another fight? Is that why Akira won’t come home?</p>
<p>     Akira doesn’t bother calling back- Matsuri barely tolerated Akira spending time with Asa <em>before </em>this whole mess. No way in hell she’s going to let Akira so much as <em>breathe </em>in her daughter’s general direction now.</p>
<p>     With wavering fingers, Akira deletes the voicemails.</p>
<p>     Rids her contact book of all her so-called ‘<em>friends’ </em>while she’s at it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>XXX</p>
<p> </p>
<p>     There’s an app on Akira’s home screen she doesn’t recognize. She deletes that, too.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Very short chapter, but the next one catalogues the official "start" of the game, so I thought it would be best to break it up.</p>
<p>My muse eats comments.</p>
<p>Feed her, please.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. April II</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It always kind of annoyed me in canon that Sojiro acknowledges that he knows what really went down That Night, but then turns around and treats Akira like a criminal anyways (he kind of says why - "it was a matter between two adults; that's what you get for butting your head into things that don't concern you," to paraphrase - but, once we learn more about Sojiro, that reasoning becomes very out of character, which leads me to believe that Atlus just wanted us to feel like there was absolutely NO ADULT on our side as of the start of the game, character consistency be damned), so as far as this story is concerned, Sojiro doesn't know what actually happened, only what the reports he was able to get his hands on told him.</p><p>P.S. Sorry that I reply so late to comments. I typically approve them as soon as I see them, but I usually don't get around to actually replying until I sit down to post the next update 😅</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Akira makes it all of three steps into the backstreets of Yongen-Jaya before deciding that she hates it.</p><p>     The buildings are crammed too closely together, the passageways running between them are too narrow and there are hardly any streetlamps. Akira can’t walk without her shoulders knocking into the people sharing the street with her and she sees the shadow of a monster that isn’t there in every side-alley she passes.</p><p>     She wants to go home.</p><p>     Home where the roads are wide and her driveway is long and there aren’t bars welded onto the goddamn windows.</p><p>     A hand lands on her forearm.</p><p>     “Are you alright, miss?”</p><p>     Akira’s breath catches in her throat as she jerks away, backs into a woman with arms full of grocery bags that yelps and gripes at her when she doesn’t immediately apologize.</p><p>     The police officer who’d grabbed her peers at her through the shadows cast over his face by the brim of his cap, brows knitted- and Akira can hear the sirens, see the red and blue lights flashing through her eyelids as she waits for help that doesn’t come.</p><p>     “Fine,” She tells him, dizzy and a little bit breathless, one hand unconsciously coming up to massage the patch of skin his touch had desecrated.</p><p>     He frowns, takes a cautious step towards her, “Are you sure?”</p><p>     “Quite.” Akira doesn’t give him time to respond, just leaves; hurries around the corner he’d been stationed on and ducks around the next.</p><p>     He doesn’t follow her.</p><p>     Akira doesn’t know whether to be pissed or relieved.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Sojiro Sakura isn’t even <em>home</em>.</p><p>     Akira stands outside the empty house that’s to become her new jail, and wonders if maybe probation follows the same rules as high school. Wonders if she shows up and her keeper isn’t there if she’s allowed to leave if he doesn’t show his face in the next fifteen minutes.</p><p>     —Only, the fifteen-minute rule doesn’t actually <em>exist</em>, is just something made up by students to give them something to hope for and perpetuated to the point of fallacy.</p><p>     With a put-upon sigh, Akira pulls her map of the Yongen-Jaya backstreets out of her pocket.</p><p>     Sakura runs a café, or so the woman manning the reception desk at the station had told Akira as she’d ever-so-kindly printed the map out for her—if he’s not at home, he’ll be…</p><p>     Akira frowns at the map, at the hundreds of creases that reside over it from where she’d folded and unfolded it dozens of times during the train ride over, turning it into one origami creation after the next before the paper was no longer suited to it, upon which point she’d simply begun creasing it at random.</p><p>     It’s been folded so many times that the image is barely decipherable.</p><p>     Akira smoothes it out as best she can, searches for the little red line the receptionist had drawn out and dubbed Plan B with a smile too bright to really be warranted.</p><p>     She finds it, eventually- barely there at all, but readable enough to point her in the right direction.</p><p>     Akira twists back the way she came, arrives at LeBlanc a few minutes later.</p><p>     She lays her hand on the door and hesitates, wonders if maybe she should just leave anyways. Turn around and walk and walk and keep on walking until nothing’s real and everything’s gone and there’s nobody to point or stare or whisper.</p><p>     Akira imagines night falling, the streets going vacant- what she’d do then.</p><p>     She pushes the door open.</p><p>     The bell rigged to it chimes, but the man in the apron propped against the bar doesn’t look up, just keeps futzing with the crossword book in his hand as an elderly couple in the booth across from him tell him all about their opinions that he clearly couldn’t care less about.</p><p>     He’s not smoking, but Akira can smell the cigarettes on him from here and the slightly sour twang they carry.</p><p><em>     If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay quiet</em>.</p><p>     Akira closes her eyes, raises a hand to the shell of her ear to shield it from the phantom gust of breath against it- switches to breathing through her mouth because if she doesn’t, she might just vomit.</p><p>     The man notices her, sighs like her presence is somehow the biggest inconvenience and he hasn’t even opened his mouth yet, but Akira hates him. Him and every other person who’s looked at her with that same exact put-upon expression on their faces over the course of the last two weeks, all of them thinking she hasn’t been on the receiving end of it already a thousand goddamn times.</p><p>     He starts talking and some distant, half buried fragment of Akira Prior wants to <em>scream</em>.</p><p>
  <em>     Fuck you. Fuck them. Fuck this.</em>
</p><p>     It’s like every emotion imaginable is raging inside her, and it’s just <em>so much—</em>too much for Akira to possibly be able to feel—so she doesn’t feel any of it. Just stands there, takes his clear disappointment in stride with a blank look on her face because as much as everything Akira used to be is lashing out inside her, imploding with the goddamn injustice of it all, everything she is now is just too tired to care.</p><p>     The longer Sakura talks, the clearer it becomes that he has absolutely no idea what he supposed to do with her.</p><p>     He runs out of pre-planned dialogue and hard-ass stares to pin her with, and then it’s just <em>awkward</em>. He sticks to the pretense of adamantly believing everything they told him about her was true—that she’s a whore, that she fucked a guy who thought he was getting it for free then went ballistic on him when he refused to cough up the money—but his eyes keep landing on Akira’s right side, healing but still noticeably battered, covered in little pin-prick scabs from being crushed up against rough brick.</p><p>     He looks, and squints, and pauses uncomfortably, but never once does he <em>ask</em>.</p><p>     Instead he fixes his attention to the leftmost half of her, buckles down his reservations and tells her there will be hell to pay if she so much as <em>thinks </em>about conducting her <em>business </em>under his roof, does she understand?</p><p>     “Yes, sir.”</p><p>     Sakura looks at her for a long moment, and Akira can see the gears turning in his mind as he tries to figure out whether she was giving him attitude or not. Finally, he sighs, dipping his head and tugging at his goatee before directing her towards the small staircase in the back of the shop with a lazy flourish.</p><p>     Akira remains firmly in her place.</p><p>     Sakura waits, staring at her with a tilted head and an extended arm for a moment too long before he seems to understand. He drops his arm, shoves his hands in his back pockets and turns to take the lead.</p><p>     Akira falls into step behind him, eyes never leaving his hands.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Sakura shows Akira to her new room.</p><p>     He points out her bed and a shipment of her things from home all packed up in an old box from the marina, but Akira hardly hears any of it through the static slowly beginning to overtake her mind. She doesn’t care about the trash or the dust or the uncomfortable looking mattress held aloft by mismatched milk crates and cinder blocks, no, what she <em>cares about </em>is—</p><p>     “There’s no door.”</p><p>     “Hmn?” Sakura hums, turning back towards her. Akira thinks he might have been talking, still- that she might have accidentally cut him off, but she really doesn’t know, doesn’t care to try and figure it out because—</p><p>     “There’s no <em>door</em>.” Akira repeats, suddenly woozy.</p><p>     Sakura watches her carefully, features lowered in a glower. He opens his mouth to speak and Akira flinches before she can tell her body not to. Sakura’s mouth snaps shut, glare evaporating in favor of a look of wide-eyed startlement.</p><p>     His expression falls into something somewhere between tentative and considering. He takes a step away from her and shuffles his feet little bit, one hand rising to kneed the back of his neck, “Yeah,” He sounds out awkwardly, somehow managing to divvy the word into multiple syllables, “There’s a rope I put up during business hours to keep customers from wandering up-” Akira’s face must do something without her input, it <em>must</em>, because then- “You can, ah, hang a curtain or something if you’d like.”</p><p>     Akira Prior wants to scream.</p><p>
  <em>     That’s not the point. Curtains and ropes aren’t solid. They hinge on the person on the other side having enough respect and common decency not to pass through them. Doors don’t care about morals.</em>
</p><p>     Akira Post takes a deep breath, pushes it out through her nose and schools her features back into something safe.</p><p>     “Okay.”</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Sakura leaves her to herself.</p><p>     Akira pulls her duffle off her shoulder and lowers it to the floor. It lands with a thud, kicking up a little puff of dust in its wake.</p><p>     Slowly, Akira paces over to the box emblazoned with the logo of her family’s marina. She lowers herself to her knees before it, bows over it and begins to pick at the tape. It catches beneath her nails- she pinches the newly raised edge between her fingers and pulls.</p><p>     Akira sits back on her heels, dropping the curling strip of packing tape to the floor beside her. With shaking hands, she eases the flaps of the box open. Nothing jumps out at her- the world doesn’t end.</p><p>     Downstairs, Sakura turns on the kitchen sink.</p><p>     Akira heaves a sigh, head dropping as she reaches to scoop up the thick envelop stationed at the very top of the box, backlit by an array of folded clothes.</p><p>     She rips it open, dumps a folded over sheet of paper and a wad of yen held together by a hair-tie out onto the clothes. Akira picks up the piece of stationary, unfolds it and smoothes it out over her lap.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Akira;</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I know this is hard. It’s scary and I cannot even begin to imagine the thoughts swirling through your head as you read my words – provided you’re even reading this at all. I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, that I’m still unable to be there for you, but you know how it is.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>I’m sorry if I packed the wrong things, or if the clothes I sent don’t match or are ones you don’t wear anymore. I didn’t realize how many things you had until it came down to choosing what to send. While I was in your closet, I found some of the money you’d set aside from working at the ice rink last summer, so I enclosed that as well with the thought that you could use it to buy anything that I forgot to pack. I know ¥50,000 sounds like a lot, but it goes quickly – use it sparingly.</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>- Dad</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  
</p><p>     Akira folds the letter over again and casts it aside, drops her head into her hands and rakes her fingers though her hair as she suppresses a bark of sardonic laughter at the sudden thought that her father just sent her a letter of termination complete with a fucking <em>severance package</em>.</p><p>
  <em>     Thank you for everything you’ve done for the family, but you’ve officially become more trouble than you’re worth. We’d feel bad for sending you out into the great big somewhere unfunded, so here’s some money that was already yours – don’t spend it all in one place! - Love, Dad.</em>
</p><p>     Akira Prior laughs.</p><p>     She laughs and laughs and <em>laughs </em>until she can’t take it anymore and is grabbing the box by one of its flaps and flinging it away from her.</p><p>     It cartwheels across the room in a way that defines all known laws of physics, spilling clothes and toiletries out onto the dust-coated floor and Akira Prior thinks <em>great</em>, just fucking <em>lovely</em>; those were probably clean.</p><p>     Akira Post takes a deep breath, pushes her hair back out of her face and gets to picking up the mess.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1) If Sojiro suspects anything is amiss after actually meeting Akira (spoiler: he does), he keeps his mouth shut, because if the worst-case scenario IS true, he's probably the LAST person Akira would want to talk to about it.</p><p>2) If it hasn't become apparent by now, one of the other things I want to explore in this fic the the dynamics of Akira's family. In game, the story writing made it seem like, prior to Akira's encounter with Shido, he had a perfectly normal life with a perfectly normal family. But, if that were the case, I can't fathom a parent sending their own child away like Akira's did. Maybe I could, if they remained in contact with the child - but we never ONCE ever hear about Akira's parents after the main story kicks off. Not even so much as a one-liner suggesting that they've been in contact with him. Why would a parent go through the trouble to arrange that their child be placed under the care of somebody they can trust (or at the very least, somebody who they've got a friend vouching for the character of) and then turn around a shun them completely? So, in order to rationalize this (mostly to myself; it angers/baffles me endlessly), I intend to spend some time in this fic exploring what Akira's life was like prior to the events of the game, and why, when the incident with Shido happened, her parents were so quick to get rid of her. </p><p>Anyways, manic rambling aside (I feel like the embodiment of that one Charlie Day meme right now), I'd love to hear from you if you have the time, be it your thoughts on the chapter, my plans, or anything else - otherwise, I'll see you all next time!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. April III</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The number of line breaks in this chapter physically pains me.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Akira changes into a pair of lounge pants and a hoodie, and works on her room for a few hours.</p><p>     She does what she can to rid it of dust and the worst of the clutter, but seeing as nothing in the room belongs to her, it’s really not her place to throw anything away. If she can work up the guts to, she’ll get around to asking Sakura about some of the things she’s set aside. See if he can’t give her an idea of what’s okay for her to throw out or find someplace else for her to put the various odds and ends she’s unearthed.</p><p>     Once she’s cleaned up to the best of her abilities, Akira takes a moment to contemplate her next move.</p><p>     She really doesn’t want to do anything else today, but she knows that it’s probably for the best for her to get some shopping done. Sakura’s bringing her to her new school tomorrow to have her introduce herself to the staff—but she doesn’t know when they’ll leave or how long they’ll be away—and the day after that she starts classes. If she doesn’t go out now, she doesn’t know when she might be able to next.</p><p>
  <em>     Ugh.</em>
</p><p>     She doesn’t want to- really just wants to try and get some sleep while the sun’s still up, but… she’s going to be angry with herself later if she doesn’t.</p><p><em>     Fine</em>.</p><p>     Decision begrudgingly made, Akira laces up a pair of rubber-toe sneakers, grabs her wallet – complete with the money her father had sent – pockets a box cutter she’d found in a tool box while she was cleaning, and sets off.</p><p>     She makes it all the way to the door before—</p><p>     “Where do you think you’re going?”</p><p>     Akira winces inwardly, lowering her hand from the door handle as she turns around to face her keeper. Sakura stands behind the counter, an empty cup in one hand and a dish towel in the other.</p><p>     “Shopping.” Akira says, keen on keeping the conversation as brief as possible.</p><p>     “What for?” Sakura asks, eyes narrowing like he’s offended at the idea that she could possibly need anything. Or, more likely, he simply doesn’t believe her. Which, fair – Akira’s not sure she’d believe her either. She kind of lies a lot. Not that Sakura knows her well enough to <em>know </em>that, but still.</p><p>     Given the circumstances.</p><p>     “School supplies,” Akira answers, because she knows it will work—and it’s not <em>exactly</em> a lie. She needs notebooks and pencils and a proper book bag. A calculator too, probably.</p><p>     That’s just not <em>all </em>she needs.</p><p>     “Oh.” Sakura says lamely, draping the dish towel over his shoulder “Right.” He clears his throat, “Well, just- be back before dark, alright?”</p><p>     “Yeah,” Akira turns back to the door, grips it by the handle and pushes it open, “Can do.”</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Akira ends up at the underground mall she’d passed earlier when she’d gotten off the tram to transfer to the Ginza Line.</p><p>     It’s smaller than she thought it would be, but she’s not complaining.</p><p>     She does her school shopping first, stocking up on the necessities, then moves on to personal items. Foundation, concealer, setting powder and blending brushes at the cosmetic’s kiosk. Air fresheners, a box of protein bars, a multipack of water bottles and pads at the convenience store. Bolts of fabric, hanging screws, S hooks, a swiss army knife, and a sewing kit at the craft’s store and, lastly, a carry-sized can of mace at the pharmacy.</p><p>     It’s a lot to carry back—especially on the train—but Akira manages.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     She makes it back to the café just as the sun is beginning to set.</p><p>     Sakura regards her from behind the counter with a dry look and a raised eyebrow, but otherwise doesn’t comment on the number of bags handing from her arms.</p><p>     Akira escapes upstairs, puts away her purchases, and gets to work on putting together a curtain immediately, wanting that little bit of extra separation as soon as possible. Sakura pokes his head up the stairs to investigate when she takes a rubber mallet to the hanging screws in order to start them in on the ceiling beam, but doesn’t tell her to stop or to keep it down like she’d been expecting him to. He just looks up at her from where she’s perched precariously atop a step ladder on the landing, tells her not to fall and leaves her to her little construction project in peace.</p><p>     By the time she finishes, it’s properly dark and Akira is beyond exhausted.</p><p>     She won’t sleep, though, she knows. Hasn’t been able to since she was yanked into an alley by her hair and told to <em>be quiet</em>, so—</p><p>     —going to sleep for the night isn’t going to happen right now.</p><p>     Heaving a sigh, Akira falls back on her bed and stares at the ceiling.</p><p>     Habitually, she fishes her phone out of her pocket, opens up the chat app and—</p><p>     Oh.</p><p>     Right.</p><p>     No more contacts. No more friends to have messaged her.</p><p>     Pursing her lips, Akira closes out of the app and skims over the other apps on her home screen, looking for something to pass the time.</p><p>     How was it that she’d ever managed to spend hours upon hours on this thing?</p><p><em>     Wait</em> <em>a second…</em></p><p>     “I thought I deleted you,” Akira frowns, gaze landing on the little black and red icon staring back at her from the middle of her screen. <em>Must not have</em>, she thinks as she picks up the unfamiliar icon and drags into the recycling bin. Her phone swooshes an affirmative and she locks it, lets it fall through her fingers to land on the bed beside her.</p><p>     Minutes pass.</p><p>     Akira drums her fingers against the mattress, scrunches her toes in the blankets, cracks her knuckles just because she can. Downstairs, Sakura turns the sink on, and Akira can hear the water moving through the pipes through wall behind her head.</p><p>
  <em>     Water…</em>
</p><p>     That’s right… there’s a bath house across the alley, isn’t there?</p><p>     Akira can’t remember the last time she’s taken a proper bath.</p><p>     They let her shower every few days at the precinct, but all they had was bar-soap and she had to keep it under five minutes, so the water rarely had the time to heat up fully.</p><p>     Yeah. A bath… a bath is just what she needs right now.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Akira packs her gym duffle with a change of clothes, a towel, a toiletry bag, and some money to cover the entry fee, and heads downstairs.</p><p>     Sakura is chatting up one of the customers, but his eyes land on Akira almost as soon as her foot leaves the last step. She raises her bag, mouths ‘<em>bath</em>’ as she points to the door with her free hand and hopes he gets it, because she <em>needs </em>this, and if he doesn’t, she might just—</p><p>     Sakura nods, tosses his chin towards the door.</p><p>     Akira relaxes, and as she slips out the door she thanks every deity she’s ever heard of for placing the bath house directly across the alley from LeBlanc, because if it wasn’t so close there’s no way in hell she’d ever be able to go out so late without an eighty-watt floodlight and a stun baton.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     The women’s baths are vacant when Akira steps out of the locker room, which is probably the best thing to happen to her in well over a month; she honestly can’t remember the last time she’s been properly alone. Showers at the precinct don’t count—there was an officer stationed on the other side of the door the whole time and he had a habit of wrapping his knuckles against the wood in tune to whatever song he’d listened to last when he was bored, assuring that Akira was always keenly aware of their proximity.</p><p>     Akira takes her time at the washing station, scrubbing her skin thoroughly and shampooing her hair twice before conditioning.</p><p>     Afterwards, as Akira is about to put her hair up and head over to the bath, it happens.</p><p>     She sees herself in the mirror, holding a handful of her hair over her head, hair tie at the ready in her opposite hand, and she just—</p><p>     She <em>feels </em>it. Can viscerally remember how her neck had snapped back when he’d grabbed her, the way her hair had pulled against her scalp, the way he’d held onto it and <em>kept holding onto it </em>and she thinks-</p><p>
  <em>     It has to go.</em>
</p><p>     She drops her hair swiftly, leaning forward on the little plastic stool to paw through her toiletry bag on the counter until she produces a small pair of barber’s scissors that she’d used to trim her bangs back home.</p><p>     There’s still nobody else around, so she doesn’t hesitate before she collects her hair again, reaches behind her head, and starts cutting.</p><p>     The scissors are small, and Akira’s hair is thick, so it takes a few minutes for her to get through all of it. After getting rid of the bulk of it, she tries to even it out a bit, snips getting a little less fervent as she goes. Before long, her trimming is more methodical than manic. A little bit longer, and she’s setting the scissors down on the counter and looking up to examine her work in the mirror.</p><p>     It’s hard to tell with her hair still a bit wet, but.</p><p>     Akira thinks she likes it.</p><p>     Feeling a bit guilty after the fact—but not guilty enough to regret it—Akira gathers up the biggest clumps of her discarded hair and throws them in the trash, going so far as to ball up a few sheets of paper towel to throw in on top. After that, she returns to the washing station to direct the rest of the hair clippings down the drain with the shower head. Then, because she didn’t anticipate how messy it would be, Akira washes her hair again, ridding her scalp of all the little cuttings that hadn’t fallen to the floor and banishing them down the drain to join their fallen brethren.</p><p>     By the time she’s finished and blown her hair dry, it’s nine fifty-two.</p><p>     LeBlanc closes at ten, and Akira doesn’t want to push her luck with Sakura any more than she already has, so, casting the untouched baths one last longing look, she resigns herself to having to come back for a proper soak some other time.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     LeBlanc’s last customers of the day walk out of the café a few seconds before Akira enters.</p><p>     “Well you certainly cut it close,” Sakura rumbles conversationally from behind the counter as the door swings shut behind her. He sets the cup he’d been cleaning down and looks up to her, mouth open to – presumably – give her another lecture. When he sees the state of Akira’s hair, though, whatever he was going to say is swiftly forgotten.</p><p>     “Sorry.” Akira murmurs before he can recover, ducking her head and shielding her face with her hand under the guise of tucking her hair behind her ear as she hurries across the floorspace and flees upstairs to her room.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I promise we’ll get to school and metaverse stuff soon, I just don’t want to rush through the first few days too quickly. Thank you all for being so very patient with me!</p><p>By the way, I made a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3bja6i69QXFqWtDNrMjg8Z?si=owfHRofRTf-DJWlSfvWwaQ">spotify playlist</a> for this story – or, well, for Akira, but I listen to it when I’m writing this fic, and it’s all from her POV so far so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ </p><p>The songs are in chronological order (in correspondence w/ TSWR's story line) so it starts off very hurt/afraid and grows more confident/aggressive in tone as Akira finds her feet again.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. April IV</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I don’t know if this is an everybody thing or just a me thing, but seeing a bunch of line breaks all grouped up together with only a few paragraphs between them seriously stresses me out. I’ve come to the realization, though, that they kind of make sense for a P5 fic (or at least this P5 fic), because there are so many times in-game where there are tiny 30 second scenes – especially early game. After restructuring both this chapter and future chapters multiple times to try and mitigate line break usage, I finally decided to stop fighting it, so sorry if they’re annoying but they’re probably going to stick around for a little while.</p><p>Breaks shown with triple X’s depict short jumps in time (anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), while breaks shown with triple O’s depict longer jumps in time (usually a day or more).</p><p>This chapter and the next chapter were originally one chapter, but right as I was about to post, I decided to split it in two and treat the resulting chapters like a double update.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Akira dreams of velvet rooms and long-nosed men and talks of rehabilitation.</p><p>     She wakes in a fugue, delirious with little recollection of the night’s occurrences. She remembers returning from the bathhouse, remembers eating half a protein bar to placate her empty stomach and lying in bed, looking up at the night sky through her window- but everything after that is a blur.</p><p>
  <em>     Chains and the color blue; little girls with eyepatches and a deep voice that warns against an unknowable, inevitable ruin.</em>
</p><p>     Akira rubs at her eyes, pressuring them with the heels of her hands until she sees stars as she lets out a low, tired groan.</p><p>     She rolls onto her stomach, drops an arm off the edge of the bed and slaps her hand blindly about the floor in search of her phone. After a long minute of blind searching the finds it, distinctly further from her than she remembers placing it, and brings it up to her face to check the time.</p><p>
  <em>     9:42</em>
</p><p>     Akira yawns silently, dropping her phone onto the comforter beside her.</p><p>     Her stomach grumbles and she huffs a sigh. Sits up to retrieve the other half of last night’s protein bar from where she’d left it on the windowsill, wrapper folded over and weighed down with the remaining half of the bar.</p><p>     She eats it, flattening out the wrapper and leaving it on the windowsill because she doesn’t have a trashcan up here—should probably get one, at some point—before retrieving a bottle of water from the multipack she’d stuffed between the crates holding up her bed to wash it down.</p><p>     When Akira’s ready to face the day, or as ready as she’ll ever be, she climbs out of bed with the intention of dressing herself.</p><p>     It’s simpler said than done, unfortunately.</p><p>     Practically every article of clothing that Akira Prior owned, Akira Post has no intention of leaving her room in. Short-shorts and mini-skirts and skinny jeans, sleeveless tees and crop tops and skin-tight camisoles— the only loose-fitting clothes Akira owned that her father had packed were the 2XL shirts she’d liked to sleep in, a selection of hoodies and zip-up jackets, and a couple pairs of lounge pants for the winter.</p><p>     All things that were fine for her to wear out shopping but are in no way appropriate for making a good first impression on the staff at her new school.</p><p>     Not left with an abundance of options, Akira resigns herself to wearing her school uniform and—after a moment’s consideration—a pair of fake glasses that had somehow seemed important enough for her father to deem worth packing.</p><p>     <strike>(Akira hasn't needed glasses since she was thirteen.)</strike></p><p>     After straightening up her bedhead and covering up the bruises on her face to the best of her abilities, Akira gathers her courage and ventures downstairs.</p><p>     Sakura is stood against the counter in a smart suit and crooked fedora, clearly waiting for her.</p><p>     He doesn’t say anything when he sees her, just crushes the cigarette he’d been smoking into the ash tray on the counter and tosses his chin towards the street as he turns away from her and starts towards the door.</p><p>     Akira ducks her head, holds her breath, and scurries after him.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Sakura’s car, like the rest of him, reeks of cigarette smoke and nicotine.</p><p>     Under the guise of propping her chin on the heel of her hand, Akira keeps her nose pressed to the fabric of her blazer’s sleeve, pulling each breath through the lingering layer of fabric softener clinging to the cuff.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Akira doesn’t know what she’d been expecting. Maybe that people who chose to work with children for a living would be more conscious of their feelings, or care more about their wellbeing, or any other number of such things, but—</p><p>     It’s just more of the same.</p><p>     She stands there and listens as the principal lays out how things are going to be, regarding Akira as though she is some demon of lust about to descend on his good school, out to corrupt the minds of the innocent. The woman that’s to be her homeroom teacher rolls her eyes and groans openly over Akira’s placement into her class like a petulant child.</p><p>     Sakura just stands there—assures them he’ll keep her under control, as if she’s some snarling beast in need of a muzzle.</p><p>     Akira’s entire being burns with a shame she hasn’t done anything to earn.</p><p>     She <em>hates.</em></p><p>     Hates that man for making her feel unwelcome in her own skin. Hates the police officers who knew but did nothing and her lawyer who didn’t even try to help her. Hates her father and his bitch of a wife for throwing her away at the first excusable opportunity and her friends for turning their backs on her. Hates Sakura and Kobayakawa and Kawakami for having the<em> gall </em>to sit atop their high horses and <em>judge</em> <em>her </em>when their job is to <em>help her</em>, goddamn it.</p><p>     <strike>Hates the ugliness she suddenly sees in the world around her, where she’d once seen beauty.</strike></p><p>     Akira hates the way it feels to hate—heavy and viscous and painful—and hates even more because of it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>No talk Akira she angy &gt;:[</p><p> </p><p>  <strike><br/><sup>(Seriously, I don't know how canon P5 protag wasn't a ball of rage, I'd be so pissed at the world if I was in his position)</sup><br/></strike></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. April V</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>To everybody returning here via update notification or bookmark: this is part two of a double update!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Sakura, apparently having realized that he hasn’t fed Akira since she fell into his care, has a bowl of curry and a cup of coffee waiting for her on the counter when she descends into LeBlanc the next morning.</p><p>     He doesn’t say a word—just makes eye contact with her as she exits the stairwell and flicks his gaze pointedly towards the food before turning away and ducking into the kitchen.</p><p>     Akira silently cleans her plate, drains her coffee, and offers a soft thank you before heading out the door.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     The rain hits hard on Akira’s shoulders, cool on her face. In so many ways she wants to just close her eyes and let it wash over her. She’s always loved rain, still loves rain even after everything that’s happened, but she knows she can’t afford to let herself stop to enjoy it. Not right now.</p><p>     She’s got somewhere to be, and she can’t go showing up looking like a drowned cat.</p><p>     So, Akira steps off the street to take shelter beneath one of the shop overhangs for a moment, reaching to retrieve her phone from her skirt pocket with the goal of pulling up her navigation app.</p><p>     She doesn’t have an umbrella, so there isn’t much she can do there, but she can make sure she knows where she’s going in order to minimize the amount of time she might otherwise spend wandering around in the rain.</p><p>     As she’s punching in her password, a figure in a skirt cuts through her peripheral to take up position a few feet to her left. Akira glances up in time to see a curtain of natural blond hair fall free and a small, distant part of her whispers-</p><p><em>     Wow</em>.</p><p>     She’s not really Akira’s type—a bit too delicate, slim and defined where Akira prefers her women plush—but still, she’s.</p><p>     Very, very pretty.</p><p>     Not wanting to stare—the girl probably gets enough of it as it is—Akira returns her attention to her phone, thumbing through her app pages in search of the little map icon she always forgets the location of.</p><p>
  <em>     What the-</em>
</p><p>     Akira frowns, brows drawing tight as her eyes land on a familiar red and black icon.</p><p>     She may not have been certain the first time, but she’s <em>sure </em>she deleted it the second time.</p><p>
  <em>     What even are you?</em>
</p><p>     Suspicious and slightly annoyed, Akira opens the app and hopes she’s not inviting a virus onto her phone as an unfamiliar car rolls to a step at the curb across from them.</p><p>     Akira looks up again, watches through the mist of rain on her glasses as the window creeps down, revealing a mop of dark brown hair and a long-faced man. He smiles, and it’s nice enough at a glance—he’s even almost got the eyes right—but Akira has seen enough fake smiles in the last two months to know a snake when she sees one.</p><p>     “You girls are going to be late.” He calls out to them, “Care for a ride?”</p><p>     Akira looks from the blond girl to the man, confused and ever-so-slightly concerned.</p><p>     She smiles brightly, but her eyes spell out disgust, “Sure, thank you!” She chirps pleasantly, and then, for reasons that Akira can’t even begin to fathom, jogs through the rain to climb inside his car.</p><p>     The man’s eyes drift to Akira, “You coming?”</p><p>     Akira’s brows furrow and she shakes her head.</p><p>     The man shrugs—looks vaguely disappointed, but seems otherwise unbothered.</p><p>     The car begins to pull away, and as Akira sees the look on the girl’s face as the window creeps closed, she wonders if, perhaps, she should have gone with them.</p><p>     Safety in numbers, and all that.</p><p>     She doesn’t get much time to dwell on it, though, because within seconds of the car beginning to pull away, Akira hears the distinct <em>slap slap slap </em>of rubber-soled shoes on wet tarmac.</p><p>     A gold-blond blur screeches past Akira, comes to a skidding stop at the corner that nearly sends it crashing to the ground.</p><p>     “Damn that asshole!” The blur growls as it explodes upright and throws an angry fist in the direction the car had gone.</p><p>     Akira wheels backwards, colliding inelegantly with the storefront behind her as she narrowly avoids catching an elbow to the face.</p><p>     “—<em>Dude!</em>” She shouts, annoyed, before she can tell herself not to—some little, not-quite-gone-yet piece of Akira Prior taking advantage of her shock and springing to take control of her mouth.</p><p>     At her outburst, the vulgar boy turns towards Akira, his chest still heaving a bit in response to his quick sprint. He glares at her, mouth stretching into a cruel sneer, “What? You gonna run cryin’ to Kamoshida?”</p><p>     Something about this attitude coming at her from a perfect stranger—not even somebody who <em>knows</em>, or thinks they do—has every bit of anger and frustration Akira’s been silently stockpiling bubbling up the back of her throat.</p><p>     “I don’t even know who <em>you </em>are, let alone who you’re talking about.” She sounds out, carefully strapping the ghost of Akira Prior down, because she’s can’t afford to lose her temper. Not now- not at <em>this</em>, of all things.</p><p>     The boy blinks at her, animosity draining from his face in favor of a look more befitting of a confused puppy than a human being.</p><p>     “What do you-” He starts, stops, eyes flicking around like he’s expecting somebody to jump out of Akira’s pocket and tell him he’s just been punked, “In that car just now- it was Kamoshida.”</p><p>      Akira sighs, the last of her temper giving way to the same bone-deep weariness that’s clung to her like tar these last few weeks. She slips her phone back into her skirt pocket and adjusts the strap of her bookbag over her shoulder, wanting nothing more than to put this exchange behind her, “Color me informed.”</p><p>     Akira moves to pass the boy, walking fast.</p><p>     He lumbers eagerly after her, each step undercut by a noticeable limp.</p><p>     “How do you not know who Kamoshida is?” He asks, skipping around Akira to pace awkwardly alongside her even as she speeds up, “You <em>do </em>go to Shujin, right?”</p><p>     Akira’s hackles begin to rise—not in anger, this time. More like the kind of agitation one feels after being woken suddenly by a noisy neighbor or when dealing with a particularly persistent mosquito. Steeping alongside the agitation is an undercurrent of tension- a readiness to move at a moment’s notice.</p><p>     But Akira seems to always be walking around with that, these days.</p><p>     “As of yesterday.”</p><p>     The boy furrows his brows at they leave the safety of the overhang, “Well stay away from Kamoshida, yeah?”</p><p>     Akira flicks her gaze back over to him, cautiously curious, “Why’s that?”</p><p>     He scowls, raindrops catching in his lashes as he kicks an upset pebble of concrete resting atop the sidewalk, “Guy might be a teacher, but he’s a fucking shitbag. Pretty sure he’s a pervert, too.”</p><p><em>     Lovely</em>.</p><p>     Akira hopes the blond girl is okay.</p><p>     “Thanks for the tip.” Akira tells him, hoping that the unfriendly slant to her words will clue the boy in on the fact that this is meant to be the end of their little conversation.</p><p>     He either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care.</p><p>     “Guy pisses me off so damn much,” He grumbles, stuffing his hands into his pockets with enough force to bust a seam, “He just- he gets away with <em>everything- </em>it’s like the school’s his fucking castle, an’ whatever he says just. <em>Goes</em>.”</p><p>     Akira heaves a sigh as she comes to a stop. Her uninvited companion makes it about four steps before he notices and paces back over to her. “What’s up?” He asks, casually concerned- like they’re <em>friends</em>.</p><p>     “It’s been lovely talking to you, it really has,” Akira tells him, tone conveying the exact opposite, “But we? We’re not friends. I don’t <em>want </em>to be friends. So you can cut it with the—” Akira raises a hand, splaying her fingers as she gestures vaguely to the whole of him, “—<em>this</em>, okay? I’m really not in the mood.”</p><p>     The boy’s face scrunches, leaving him looking confused and vaguely hurt.</p><p>     Akira instantly feels guilty, because she never used to be this bitchy to people who didn’t deserve it—doesn’t <em>like </em>being this bitchy, just as a general principle, but-</p><p>     “Just.” Akira exhales, tired, “Leave me alone… please.”</p><p>     She shoulders past him, head bowed.</p><p>     This time, he doesn’t follow.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Akiiiiiraaaaaaaaa, stop being meeeeaaaaaaaaan!!!!</p><p> </p><p>  <sup></sup><br/><sup>He just wants a friend ;-;</sup><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. April VI</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I started this fic thinking it was going to be a pure Akira POV, but the more I wrote, the more I was like, "Okay... but what if it wasn't?" so, yeah, while Akira is still going to be the main POV, we alternating now, friends.</p><p>I'm not /super/ happy with this chapter, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that I cannot personally justify the MC and Ryuji's reasoning as to why they would just WANDER into an incredibly sus castle (like, have they SEEN movies?) that has appeared seemingly out of thin air in place of where their school should be. So the entire time I was writing this (and this may be in Ryuji's POV now, but I wrote a whole thing that got scrapped that was just me trying to justify my Akira - my cautious, paranoid Akira - setting foot into that castle, and I just COULDN'T), I was doing that horror movie thing where you yell at the screen like, no, you absolute IDIOT, what you DOING, do you not enjoy LIFE?! </p><p>Ugh.</p><p>Anyways.</p><p>Not my best work, but I am REALLY looking forward to next chapter. This was originally meant to be apart of it, but it just kept getting longer and longer and <em>longer</em>, so I finally made the executive decision to cut Ryuji's POV off the beginning of it to make what comes next more easily digestible.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>     With each step he takes, Ryuji wants more and more to turn back.</p><p>     He doesn’t know if it’s because of how late he stayed up last night, or how much he dreads going to school these days, or the bone-deep disgust clinging persistently to his <em>everything</em> after having been subjected to Kamoshida’s bullshit so damn early or something else entirely, but he feels goddamn terrible. Like his entire body is being weighed down- like he’s walking the streets beneath one of those heavy lead aprons they make you wear during x-rays.</p><p>     “Ugh, I wanna go home!” Ryuji whines to the empty street, loud just because he can be.</p><p>     Nobody answers, and Ryuji sighs, wringing the back of his neck with one hand and shaking his head lightly to displace the raindrops that have gathered in his hair.</p><p>     He’d given that angry girl from earlier a wide birth—waited ‘till she’d turned the corner and counted to twenty before continuing on his way—‘cause she’d seemed like she’d needed it, but he’s almost certainly going to be late for it.</p><p>     Well, <em>later</em>.</p><p>     Not that it really matters much, anyways. Nothing Ryuji does is right, these days. He shows up early and he’s planning something, on time he’s just gotten lucky—late he’s just proving them all right, perpetuating their sneers.</p><p>     It’s such bullshit.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     The walk is long and wet and miserable—Ryuji’s bad leg <em>aches</em> in that way it only ever does when it rains—and the only reason Ryuji hasn’t already said ‘fuck it’ and turned back is because by the point that he’d seriously started considering it, he was nearly there and it’d have taken longer for him to get back to the station than it was going to take him to just suck it up and go to school.</p><p>     That, and his ma ‘d be pissed if she got a call from school about him skipping, so.</p><p>     Yeah.</p><p>     With a pressure on his temples, a throbbing in his leg, and socks that <em>squish </em>with every step, Ryuji resigns himself to a long day of the usual—</p><p>     “—what the shit…?!”</p><p>     Before Ryuji, precisely in place of where Shujin Academy <em>should </em>be, a large caste stretches up from the earth, up unto the red-tinted storm clouds swirling above. The sign planted before the structure <em>reads </em>Shujin, too, but there’s just- there’s no <em>way </em>that-</p><p>     Ryuji shakes his head and claps his palms against his cheeks, planting his feet as he stares down the anomaly before him, as if that will somehow scare it into disappearing.</p><p>     A minute passes.</p><p>     Then two.</p><p>     The castle persists.</p><p>     Ryuji looks around, eyes carefully searching for any trace of another student, but he finds nobody. In fact, now that he’s listening for it, it’s as if the noise of the city has disappeared completely. The noise – the bustle of business and traffic and bystanders – that can usually be heard even a few blocks away is gone, reduced to a level of absolute silence that Ryuji suspects he’d only been able to overlook in the first place in part of the rain splattering haphazardly against the pavement.</p><p>     Pinching his bottom lip between his canines, Ryuji takes an uneven step towards the gates.</p><p>     Nothing jumps out at him, so Ryuji keeps walking.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Ryuji doesn’t know what he expected.</p><p>     Maybe that the castle was just- just some cardboard cutout or something. A really, really, <em>really </em>realistic one.</p><p>     But no.</p><p>     It’s just as- well, castle-<em>y </em>on the inside.</p><p>     “H-ello…?” Ryuji calls out quietly, voice cracking halfway through the word.</p><p>     Silence.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     For an opulent castle in the middle of the city, the place was suspiciously empty.</p><p>     Ryuji doesn’t stay too far from the main hall for fear of getting lost—his sense of direction is, admittedly, not the best—but every connecting hallway and room that he pokes his head down showed no sign of habitation. No indicators that anybody’s ever been there or ever—</p><p>     A flash of something in Ryuji’s peripheral puts an end to the thought, and Ryuji snaps his gaze up in time to see… <em>something… </em>move on the other side of the banister atop the landing overlooking the main hall.</p><p>     Brows furrowing, Ryuji adjusts the straps of his bag and starts up the leftmost set of stairs.</p><p>     At the top, there’s… there’s a…. <em>what the fuck.</em></p><p>     That’s it.</p><p>     Ryuji is dreaming.</p><p>     First, he finds a giant castle where his school is supposed to be. Super weird, yeah, and Ryuji is already beyond being able to justify it in any sort of way, but <em>now </em>there’s a giant baroque oil painting of <em>Suguru Kamoshida</em>, looking like the noblest shitheel Ryuji’s ever seen, just hanging <em>front and center</em>?</p><p>     Absolutely not.</p><p>     Ryuji’s gaze shifts downwards, away from the painting, and he notices for the first time—his attention having been too immediately drawn to the giant ass painting of the man that had singlehandedly made Ryuji’s life a living hell—that there’s somebody standing in front of the painting.</p><p>     Ryuji doesn’t have long to dwell on even that, though, because almost as soon as he notices the figure- as soon as he places her as that angry girl from earlier with the stick up her ass- some chode in a full-blown suit of armor is marching up out of literally no-where, <em>far too quietly, </em>and raising his blade high.</p><p>     The girl must hear her soon-to-be assailant, or sense that he’s there or something, because suddenly she’s swinging around, eyes wide as Ryuji scrambles up the last few steps- as the man in the armor brings his sword arm down, jamming the pommel of his blade into the girl’s temple with a painful sounding <em>thud </em>that has her going limp on-contact.</p><p>     Ryuji shouts something, he doesn’t even know what, as he steps off the landing, one arm going back to pull off his bag and whip it at the knight—the <em>knight, </em>what is even going on here?!—and maybe Ryuji’s still trying to rationalize as he throws himself at the man after his bag, because he’s half-hoping that some director is going to scream ‘cut’ and come running out of nowhere to tear Ryuji a new one for ruining their scene, but-</p><p>     Nothing comes.</p><p>     Ryuji bounces lamely off the knight’s shield as he raises it, swats Ryuji away from him with all the effort of somebody casting away an insect.</p><p>     Ryuji slides across the marble painfully, every inch of his body aching.</p><p>     The knight advances on him, Ryuji’s schoolbag hanging off one of the angled bits of metal on his shoulder guards by the strap, and Ryuji will admit-</p><p>     This is not how he had pictured his day going when he woke up this morning.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>RL has been SUPER hectic for me lately - hence my absence - but if everything goes according to plan, the next chapter should be finished and posted sometime over the course of the next few days :)</p><p>Thank you to everybody who has commented so far! Your feedback means so much &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. April VII</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>ATTENTION: Because a few people have been expressing concerns regarding how things will go with Kamoshida; As of my current plans for this story, there will NOT be any non-con aside from references to the events of the introduction. Any non-con on Kamoshida's part will be attempted at worst--save for possible references to acts of non-con that he has already committed, or have happened off screen--and I will be putting a warning beforehand so that said scenes can be skipped if needed. This is my first time writing a story with such sensitive subject matter, so if I fail to warn of something properly ahead of time, please let me know so I can!</p><p><strong>TW:</strong> References to police brutality in the beginning. To skip, begin reading at the paragraph that begins with "Akira jerks back"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>     Akira’s head throbs in the darkness.</p><p>
  <em>     Hands land rough on her shoulder, pinning her to the pavement. A knee digs into her back between her shoulder blades. Red and blue lights flash through her eyelids. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>     “I want this kept quiet.” A slimy voice hisses over the blood rushing in her ears.</em>
</p><p>     “-re you alright?”</p><p>
  <em>     Akira doesn’t go quietly. Not this time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>     She kicks and bites, elbows and scratches; plants her feet, wrenches her bound hands back to fist her assailant’s clothes and <strong>throws</strong> with all her might. Another body slams into her, grips her hard by her upper arms and no amount of thrashing loosens their grip.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>     She screams, and screams, and <strong>screams.</strong></em>
</p><p>     “-mon, please don’t be dead!”</p><p>
  <em>     A foot slams on the breaks. Akira’s prone body lurches forwards, falling heavily into the footwell. Stars burst behind her eyelids as her bad shoulder connects with the floor. A pained sob is punched from her chest and—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>     “—Can you <strong>please </strong>shut her up?!”</em>
</p><p>     “-please, please, <em>please</em>, wake up!”</p><p>
  <em>     Feet fall heavy as the officer rounds the squad car, pulls the rear door open. Akira’s breathing hard, glaring up at him through her hair from her place in the footwell. His eyes are sad, pitying, but it doesn’t mean <strong>shit</strong>. He reaches towards her—</em>
</p><p>     A rough hand lands on Akira’s shoulder.</p><p>     “<strong><em>Don’t touch me!</em></strong><em>”</em></p><p>     Akira jerks back, arms and legs lashing out against her assailant. A boyish squawk and a painful <em>thud </em>rung out, pulling Akira abruptly back into alertness. Her chest heaves as she blinks her eyes open, the must-sour smell of mossy brick and wet rust flooding her senses as she scrambles to place her surroundings.</p><p>
  <em>     (A sky, bleeding red- a castle, shooting from the earth unto the clouds. She must be dreaming, but… the rain is cold on her shoulders, wet as it soaks into her clothes and hair. She remembers waking up that morning. Her head hurts.)</em>
</p><p>     Somebody groans in the darkness. Akira’s eyes blink rapidly, acclimatizing.</p><p>
  <em>     (Her feet carrying her inside beyond her own volition, every ounce of self-preservation dulled. Everything is foggy. The heavy clanking of metal on metal. Stars bursting behind her eyes as she turns to meet the source of the sound.)</em>
</p><p>     A form begins to take shape- lanky and curled in on itself.</p><p>
  <em>     (A voice not Akira’s own booming in outrage- the wet squeak of sneakers on polished marble as her body crumples to the floor. Tired… so tired.)</em>
</p><p>     “—not dead… so, <em>so </em>not dead—” The little ball mutters breathlessly to itself.</p><p>     Spiky blond hair. White skate shoes with worn soles. A loud yellow shirt.</p><p>     The kicked puppy from earlier.</p><p>     Akira sits up fully on the hard cot she’d at some point been moved to, glancing down briefly at the damp men’s blazer that falls from her chest onto her lap, displaced by her newfound verticality.</p><p>     As Akira shifts her gaze to her surroundings, the pieces begin to come together in her mind. Akira grabs the blazer, tosses it to the boy on the floor as he flops into a vaguely starfish-esque position, face still open in a pained wince.</p><p>     She doesn’t like it- being in such closed quarters with a stranger, but.</p><p>     Like it or not, whatever this is, whatever's going on- they’re in it together.</p><p>     (<strike>Akira remembers the boy walking with a noticeable limp. A downward kick to the shin of his bad leg should be enough to disable him, if need be</strike>.)</p><p>     “Where are we?” A stupid question, perhaps, considering that at this point all immediate signs point to <em>medieval prison</em>- so. Akira shakes her head, wincing with the pain it brings and lifting a hand to probe at the tender lump on her temple as she amends, “What happened?”</p><p>     “Beats the shit outta me.” The boy groans as he pushes himself up on one elbow, his other hand reaching to reclaim his blazer, “My first thought after I realized I wasn’t dreaming was that this is some sorta movie set or medieval fair, but-” He hisses as he rises to a fully upright position, ailed by some unseen injury, “-those actors ‘d be taking their roles <em>way </em>to seriously.”</p><p>     Akira’s brows crease, “Actors?”</p><p>     The boy waves a hand as he pushes himself to his feet, “Those armored freaks that jumped you, then beat my ass when I walked in on it?” He questions as he probes gently at his side only to hiss sharply and whine, “Jeez, I dunno if it was you or them, but I think one’a my ribs is cracked.”</p><p>     Akira huffs as she pushes herself off the cot and paces past the boy to inspect the door of the cell, ever mindful of his presence in her periphery, “If you’d broken a rib, you’d be able to tell without poking it.” She glances back to regard him briefly as she lays one hand on the door, “Might’ve bruised it some, though.” Truth is, Akira doesn’t know the first thing about diagnosing broken ribs, but it’s a problem they can’t do anything about right now, and the kid seems to be breathing alright, so… it’s probably fine. Hopefully. No need to give him something to panic about.</p><p>     Should still get it checked out, if they can figure a way out of here.</p><p>     —<em>When</em>. When they figure a way out of here.</p><p>     Akira rattles the door, hears the deadbolt in the lock catch on the inside of the mechanism. Frowning, she takes a step back, lifts a foot and aims a kick to the lock to little effect.</p><p>     “I already tried all that shit when they tossed us in here.” The boy calls, “Lock’s rusted to hell, but damn if it ain’t doin’ it’s job.”</p><p>     Akira huffs and takes another step back- raises a brow as the boy’s words register and looks over to him, “You were still conscious when they threw you in?”</p><p>     The boy shakes his head, “Nah, woke up a bit b’fore you. Started getting worried when you didn’t seem like you were gonna come to any time soon.”</p><p>
  <em>     No relying on him for the layout, then.</em>
</p><p>     Akira turns back to the door, pulling her phone out of her skirt pocket and using the light from its screen to get a better look at the lock. It’s big, blocky- almost cartoon-like in nature. As if it was designed from the outside in, with little regard for actual practicality.</p><p>     Akira looks back to the boy and cants her chin towards her bag, abandoned on the floor a few feet from the cot, “Toss me my bag?”</p><p>     He does.</p><p>     Akira catches it out of the air, props it up on one knee and digs through the side pocket until she procures the little swiss army knife she’d bought the day before last during her shopping trip, “Here,” She says, switching on her phone’s flashlight and holding it out to the boy, “Keep this pointed at the lock.”</p><p>     “Nah, I, ah, I got my own.” He says, pulling his own cell from his back pocket and switching on its flashlight.</p><p>     “Whatever works,” Akira huffs around an eyeroll as she shrugs her bag on and drops to one knee, “Just keep it lit up for me.” She finds a medium-sized blade and pulls it open, tosses her gaze back to the blonde as she extends her arm towards the lock, “I assume you’ve already checked to see whether or not we’ve got a signal here?”</p><p>     “Don’t got any bars. Lotta my apps wouldn’t open, either.” The boy affirms, pausing a moment before tipping his chin Akira’s way as she fits her blade into the keyhole, “You know how to pick locks?”</p><p>     “If anybody asks? No. Actually? Yes.” Perks of having a near-perfect muscle memory; Akira doesn’t <em>learn </em>new skills so much as she just <em>acquires </em>them through an hour or two of trial and error. Downside, the challenge of learning is 100% of the fun, so Akira rarely actually <em>uses </em>any of said new skills once she’s done putting in the time it takes to learn them.</p><p>     Suppose it’s coming in handy today, though.</p><p>     —Not that this lock is much of a lock at all, Akira thinks, suspicions confirming themselves as she turns her blade aside and feels the deadbolt turn with it. Thank god; Akira isn’t exactly walking around with bobby pins, these days. A <em>real </em>lock would’ve been an issue.</p><p>     “Holy shit- did that just- that was like three seconds!” The boy exclaims, way too loudly and far too closely to Akria’s ear for her liking.</p><p>     “Don’t look so impressed,” Akira says to the boy as she closes the blade, still a bit stiff due to its relative newness, “Forget needing a key- I’m pretty sure any flat piece of metal would’ve done the trick.” Akira stands, pocketing the blade and pushing the door open, wincing when it screeches loudly at the hinges, “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here.”</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     There are more pressing concerns, Akira knows, but as she and the boy slowly navigate the dark prison, she can’t stop thinking.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>     Where are we?</em>
</p><p>     They cross a bridge of fallen cages; half submerged in the waterway cutting through the dungeon hall. Their bars are wet, slick with scum- Akira’s foot lands wrong on the last one, her leg slips through the bars, dropping her to one knee with a yelp and a painful <em>clang.</em></p><p>     “Shit- you okay?” She hears the boy call from his place on solid ground.</p><p>     Akira sucks in a sharp breath, plants her hands on the bars and pushes herself up, threading her foot carefully back through the gap and giving her ankle an experimental roll. It hurts a bit—she’ll need to be more mindful of her movements—but it’s not sprained.</p><p>     “Yeah,” Akira breathes.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>     What’s going on here? </em>
</p><p>     They run into a guard rotation a few minutes later, Akira yanking the blond behind a stack of crates by the collar of his shirt just in time to avoid being seen.</p><p>     The men in metal suits lumber past them, unaware, and there’s just something not <em>right </em>about them. They don’t make nearly as much noise as they should, first of all- secondly, there’s no way they should be able to stand with the armor shaped the way it is, let <em>alone </em>once a sword and shield’s been added to their ensemble; they’re far too top heavy to do anything but teeter over.</p><p>     Just like the lock on the jailcell, the soldiers roaming the hall are more caricature than real- something that exists based only on knowledge of something’s appearance, with little to no understanding of what’s necessary for it to work.</p><p>
  
</p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>     This can’t possibly be reality.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>     And yet—</em>
</p><p>     Akira’s heart beats hard in her chest, adrenaline flooding her system, as she and the boy sprint down the dimly lit corridor, a cacophony of metallic clanging ringing out not far behind them.</p><p>     They’d been so careful not to be seen, but in the end, it hadn’t even mattered. Damn soldiers cropping up out of frigging <em>nowhere</em>.</p><p>     “Uhh- we’ve got a problem!” The blond shouts.</p><p>     “I see it!” Akira spits back, eyes locked on the split in the corridor, coming up quickly.</p><p>     “Which way?!”</p><p>     “—You’re asking <em>me</em>?!” Akira squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, shakes her head and calls out the first direction that comes to mind, “<em>Ugh- </em>Left!”</p><p>     Akira wheels around the turn-off as it approaches, one hand reaching out to help her corner without spilling into the opposite wall in her haste. The blond isn’t so agile with his bad leg- clatters instead into a heap of limbs behind her with a wounded yelp.</p><p>     Akira lurches, stuttering to a half stop.</p><p>     Everything in her screams to keep going, but—</p><p>     “<em>Fuuuck!</em>” Akira groans, cursing her bleeding heart as she stumbles backwards to pull the kid to his feet and yank him back into motion, planting a hand between his shoulder blades and shoving him ahead of her with an impatient, “<em>Go, go, go!</em>”</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     Akira’s lungs burn, chest heaves as she tips her head back against the cool brick, hands shaking as she settles them around her legs and swallows dryly, wishing beyond anything that she’d thought to toss a water bottle into her bag before leaving this morning.</p><p>     Akira lets her head loll to the side, eyes dipping tiredly as she addresses the boy collapsed against the wall a few feet away from her, “How’s the leg?” She asks, quietly, mindful of the fact that, even though they’d finally managed to lose their pursuers, they could still be nearby. Skulking around in that armor that’s quiet up until it’s not.</p><p>     The boy groans softly. Akira can hear fabric rustling, can make out the shape of his arm as it moves and thinks he might be massaging the muscles in his calf. He’s quiet for a long moment, then, “Hurts like a sonuva’ bitch.” His voice is bitter, loathing- more angry with himself than the pain.</p><p>     He knows he’s slowing them down.</p><p>     Akira taps a foot against the stone, lets her eyes slip closed so she can think for a second—figure out what they should do from here. Finally, she sighs, pushes herself to her feet and raises a hand to tousle her hair.</p><p>     “You stay here,” She says, when the boy makes a move like he’s going to stand too, “Catch your breath,” Give his leg a break, she doesn’t say- doesn’t think she needs to, or that he’d appreciate it very much, if she did, “I’m gonna scout ahead a bit, see if I can’t find us a way out.” Akira will be able to move faster on her own, will be able to lose any pursuers she might acquire without constantly having to check that the boy is keeping pace with her.</p><p>     “You sure?” The boy’s voice is small, unsure- laced with something like guilt.</p><p>     “I’ll be fine,” Akira tells him as she paces towards the unlocked door of the empty cell they’d ducked into, “You hear anybody coming, hide under the cot.” Slowly, she eases the door open, careful to make sure it doesn’t whine at the hinges.</p><p>     “Wait.” The boy calls out in a whisper as Akira slips through the crack in the door.</p><p>     She stops- doesn’t say anything, because she doesn’t have anything <em>to </em>say and has never been a fan of wasting words.</p><p>     “I’m— Ryuji.” A pause, stilted, “Sakamoto.”</p><p>     Akira sighs, because she could honestly care less.</p><p>     “I’ll be back,” She tells him, stepping the rest of the way through the crack in the door.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>     It’s easier, navigating the dungeon alone.</p><p>     There’s no itch under her skin, for one- that twitchy, restless feeling that seems to cling to her like a mold whenever she’s in the company of somebody she doesn’t know or trust—which is everybody, these days.</p><p>     Without it, Akira is free to pay attention to the things that are important- listening for the distant muffled echo of boots on stone instead of being distracted by each and every one of Sakamoto’s movements in her periphery. Hyperaware of the distance between them, always ready to cave his bad leg in and bolt even though the logical piece of her brain <em>knows </em>that she doesn’t need to be afraid of him—that he’s just as much a victim here as she is.</p><p>     But people do selfish things when they’re scared, Akira knows. If it comes down to it, Sakamoto doesn’t <em>need</em> to be able to outrun the guards- he just needs to be able to outrun Akira.</p><p>     Akira shakes her head, banishes the thought from her mind because she can’t afford to be distracted right now. Has more important things to be doing.</p><p>     She slinks through the dungeon on light feet, cataloging each turn she takes. It seems to go on forever- disconcertingly silent, save for the babbling water as it rushes down the central canal. Every cell is empty, every door open- like all their inhabitants just wandered off, same as Akira and Sakamoto.</p><p>     —Which is why it’s so strange when Akira eventually comes upon a cell that <em>is </em>closed.</p><p>     She looks both ways, up and down the corridor, before treading over to it, brows drawn. Peers into the darkness of the cell at a distance, cautious, before advancing more, only to throw herself back as something clatters noisily against the bars, a high caricature of a voice calling out, “Hey- you!”</p><p>     Akira’s heart rams angrily against her ribs as she catches herself—eyes darting about the cell wildly as she searches for the source of the voice.</p><p>     “Down here!” Comes the voice again, the bars of the cell rattling once more.</p><p>     Akira’s eyes snap downwards to-</p><p>     To-</p><p>     —A bulbus head pushed against the bars. Short, stubby arms tipped in vaguely hand-shaped paws flailing uselessly between the gaps. Big eyes, blinking irately up at Akira even as her own eyes widen, mouth falling open in a mute scream.</p><p>     What.</p><p>     The.</p><p>     Fuck.</p><p>     “Don’t just stand there staring at me- get me out of here!” The cat (?) thing (?!) yowls, flailing more aggressively before, the rattling loud enough to cut through Akira’s shock.</p><p>     “—<em>Shut up!</em>” Akira hisses, head whipping around wildly as she tries to figure out whether or not the little cat-shaped goblin’s commotion has drawn any attention, fully ready to break into a sprint if it has.</p><p>     Aside from the maybe-animal, probably something-else, all is quiet.</p><p>     “You’re real, right? From outside?” The thing asks, voice hushed now as it settles against the bars, adopting a wide-eyed look of desperate urgency, “If you get me out of this cage, <em>I </em>can get you out of this castle!”</p><p>     Akira’s brows scrunch as she regards the… creature, the back of her mind a litany of rationalizations- half-assed explanations as she tries to figure out what she’s looking at, what it means when paired against everything else she’s seen since she’s set foot in this place and she <em>knows</em>, now- knows that she’s either dreaming or insane or something because none of this is logical, none of it makes sense- not within the confines of reality, at least, but-</p><p>     Akira can drive herself crazy searching for an explanation later.</p><p>     For now-</p><p>     For now, Akira needs to get a fucking grip.</p><p>     “Who says I’m looking to get out?” Akira asks slowly, evenly, as she approaches the cell, eyes on the animal even as her ears are attuned to every little sound in the distance, waiting at even the slightest suggestion of a guard rotation.</p><p>     <strike>(<em>You’re real, right? </em>The thing had asked- an interesting choice of words.) </strike></p><p>     The maybe-cat scoffs, leans into the bars with a wry smirk even as Akira can see it’s tail quivering meekly behind it, “You mean you <em>meant </em>to be here? Dressed like <em>that?</em>” It snarks, eyes darting up Akira’s school uniform doubtfully, “I don’t think so.”</p><p>     <strike>(<em>From outside? </em>Outside of what? The castle? The dungeon? Someplace else entirely?)</strike></p><p>     “Says the children’s mascot.” Akira snips back smoothly, not in the mood.</p><p>     “I-” the creature puffs, righteously offended, “I am <em>not</em>- how <em>dare</em> you-!”</p><p>     Akira crouches until she’s at something close to eye level with the creature and regards it with a critical look, “<em>Quiet</em>.” She tells the animal; voice low, sharp and around the ‘<em>t</em>,’ “Give me reason to tell you again, and I’m gone.”</p><p>     It narrows its eyes at her, “You wouldn’t.”</p><p><em>     Try me</em>, Akira lets her eyes say.</p><p>     The thing puffs, frustrated, and presses it’s too-big head against the bars, “Fine,” It huffs, “What do you want?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*singing* This is the chapter that never ends~</p><p>I don't know how many more times I'm going to break this chapter apart. Like last chapter, this was supposed to span until Akira's awakening, but it just kept going and going and GOING so here I am, breaking it up again. </p><p>Akira is going to awaken her persona next chapter if it kills me.</p><p>As always, thank you all for such wonderful feedback! I'm sorry that I've been so terrible at replying to comments but I promise I read each and every one and they absolutely make my day ❤</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. April VIII</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Shoutout to P5S for getting me off my ass and back to working on this story.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>     Stop thinking about it.</em>
</p><p>Akira repeats the command over and over in her head like a mantra as she backtracks through the dungeon to the cell she’d left Sakamoto in, far too aware of the scrap of paper burning a hole in her skirt pocket.</p><p>She just blackmailed a cat into drawing her a map of a dungeon.</p><p><em>     Akira</em> just blackmailed a <em>cat </em>into drawing her a <em>map </em>of a <em>dungeon</em>.</p><p> <strike>(It’d had little fuzzy thumbs, fumbling sloppily with the marker Akira had passed it through the bars- had needed to use its other paw/hand to steady it enough for it to write. The map had still come out looking like a child’s drawing, but really what did Akira <em>expect </em>when she’d stuck one of her notebooks through the cage bars and ordered a disturbingly sentient <em>children’s toy </em>to draw her a map of a <em>dungeon.</em>)</strike></p><p>Akira’s mind races, trying feebly to get a grasp on just what the <em>fuck </em>her day has turned into and inevitably circling back into—</p><p><em>     You’re dreaming</em>.</p><p>This is all just one <em>incredibly vivid</em>, incredibly <em>lucid</em>, dream.</p><p>—<em>Stop—</em></p><p><em>     Stop </em>thinking <em>about it!</em></p><p>Akira comes to a brief stop, pulls in a deep breaths and brings her hands up to knead her face, wincing lightly as she’s reminded rudely of the bruises still staining her skin- likely visible now, after being exposed to this morning’s downpour.</p><p>Akira groans quietly in the dark, lets her hands drop to her sides, ball into fists.</p><p>Dwelling on this shit is going to get her killed.</p><p> <strike>(She needs to just <em>stop</em>. Accept what’s happening right now as reality and save her rabid justifications for when she’s out of here.)</strike></p><p>Akira pulls in a long breath.</p><p> <strike>(There’s something about this place. Something sharp and greedy, bleeding her of all the emotions she’d been repressing these past few weeks. Scrambling up her head, stuffing cotton into the cracks between thoughts, urging her feel everything she doesn’t have time to feel.)</strike></p><p>Closes her eyes.</p><p> <strike>(Shelves her curiosity. Akira Prior’s manic desire to <em>understand </em>that’s been plaguing her ever since she woke up, because there isn’t any room for that version of herself here. Isn’t room for it anywhere. Not anymore.)</strike></p><p>Exhales—</p><p> <strike>[<em> “ W h a t  a r e  y o u  d o i n g? ” </em>] </strike></p><p>—and presses on, numb as she was when she woke up this morning.</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>Sakamoto is under the cot when Akira finally finds her way back, squished so far back against the wall that if it weren’t for the stark white of his sneakers poking out of the end of the cot where he’s too tall to fully fit, Akira wouldn’t have even noticed him.</p><p>“It’s just me,” Akira says lowly as she steps into the cell and watches his shoes hastily disappear under the lip of the cot, sucked back for fear of being seen.</p><p>There’s a scuffling sound as he pulls himself close enough to the edge to peer out at her, eyes bright even in the relative dimness of the tiny space.</p><p>Akira sighs, holding up the folded square of notebook paper (the origin of which she is still <em>adamantly </em>not thinking too hardly about, thank you), “Mapped us a way outta here,” She lies as she tosses her head towards the outside hall, eyes on the lookout for soldiers rather than lingering in the space she knows to be clear, “C’mon.”</p><p>Sakamoto shimmies out from under the cot and shakes out his clothes, “How’s the leg?” She asks as he pulls his schoolbag out from behind a barrel in the corner of the cell, only observing the movement through her periphery.</p><p>The boy steps to her side—too close, shoulders almost bumping in the narrowness of the cell door; Akira steps casually away out into the hall—and frowns even as he says, “Better,” tapping the toe cap of his shoe against the stone floor.</p><p>Akira can’t tell if he’s lying or telling the truth while still being frustrated at the fact that his leg was ever a problem in the first place.</p><p>Not really any of her business either way, she supposes.</p><p>“Let’s get moving, then. It’s a ways to go.”</p><p> </p><p>XXX</p><p> </p><p>They move slowly, if only because the once-regular guard rotations have waned to an increasingly suspicious level of nonexistence, and Akira knows better than to credit it to the universe deciding to finally give her a fucking break.</p><p>Something is going on.</p><p>Related her and Sakamoto being on the move or the cat-shaped cryptid she let loose to run amuck, Akira doesn’t know, but <em>something </em>is happening here, behind the scenes. She can… she can <em>feel </em>it, on the other side of the cotton in her mind. Damned if she can make heads or tails of it, but it’s there. Lurking, or- or maybe waiting.</p><p>Still, they’ve got no choice but to advance if they ever want to get out—so that’s exactly what they do. Pressing on past corridors of empty cells and creepy drawbridges until they finally find the spire of stairs leading upwards, carrying them into the castle proper.</p><p>There’s a moment, then, once they’ve stepped into the light of the upstairs hall, where Sakamoto glances at Akira, abruptly snaps his head around and declares—<em>far too loudly</em>, “Holy shit, your <em>face!</em>”</p><p>“Quiet!” Akira hisses.</p><p>Sakamoto, at least, looks apologetic, glancing around quickly to see if his outburst had garnered attention—it hadn’t, luckily—before ducking down to follow after Akira as she treads carefully down the hall, tracing their position on the map with one finger, “Dude, what happened?” He asks, smart enough to at least whisper, this time.</p><p>“You were there,” Akira comments, attention not leaving her task, “I got knocked out and smashed my face on the floor.”</p><p>The boy makes a sound in his throat, doubting, “I know what fresh bruises look like, okay, and those?” He gestures to the whole of her face, “Those ain’t fresh.”</p><p>There’s a lot to be inferred from that sentence, and Akira for the life of her isn’t going to be the one to do it, “It’s really none of your business.”</p><p>Sakamoto huffs in a way that suggests he’d very much like to <em>make</em> <em>it</em> his business, but thankfully doesn’t push the topic any further—mostly because he can’t, because it’s at that point that a patrol of guards turns the corner down the hall and sees them.</p><p>They run.</p><p>For a very long time they run, the guards barreling behind them far too closely to lose them by ducking into a room like they’d done in the dungeons. To make matters worse, Akira has absolutely no idea where they even are, now, because the not-cat’s map had detailed a straight shot to the exit and nothing more.</p><p>The longer they run, the more tired they get, the more persistent the cotton-feeling gets. Then they round a corner, and the situation gets infinitely <em>worse</em>, because—</p><p>“It’s a dead end!” Sakamoto shouts, panicked, and <em>yes</em>, Akira can <em>see that</em>.</p><p>There’s a lot of hallway still before they get to it, at least. Long enough to maybe figure something out. Akira scans ahead, “There! Door at the end, on the right,” she points, “We get inside, see if we can barricade it-” Figure out the rest from there, “You got one last burst in you?” She asks—because at the pace they’re moving they absolutely aren’t going to make it in time unless they break some fucking limits.</p><p>Sakamoto makes a sound, like he knows why she’s asking and is miserable for it, “Maybe,” He calls back, not sounding sure at all, even as he picks up the pace to keep with Akira while she forces herself to go faster, faster, <em>faster</em>.</p><p>The soles of her feet are burning from the friction and she can’t feel her legs. Sakamoto’s made the executive decision to run like he doesn’t have a handicap to worry about being kind to and is overtaking her at a frankly alarming rate—though the pained grunts escaping him tell her that it’s not without a great deal of pain.</p><p>He’s five feet ahead of her, then ten, then at the door, almost falling over at the sudden screeching halt he comes to. He grabs the doorhandle, jiggles it, then promptly yells, “It’s locked!”</p><p>“<em>Shit</em>.” Akira hisses. She drops one hand to fumble into her skirt pocket for her knife—which is an undertaking, while sprinting for one’s life—grabbing hold of it finally just before skidding to a stop before the door. There’s no outside lock on this one, not like in the dungeons, but they share the same comically large keyhole- which hopefully means it’ll be just as easy to open.</p><p>Her hands are shaking badly, though, fingers clumsy in their search for the right sized blade. Sakamoto is murmuring urgently under his breath, an impatient litany of <em>c’mon, c’mon, c’mon</em>, that Akira’s not even sure he’s aware he’s doing. Finally, she gets the blade she needs. Doesn’t look to see how much time they have because that would be <em>wasting </em>said precious time—if the volume of the guards’ footsteps is any indication, it isn’t much—and thankfully all it takes to get the lock open is to jam the blade in and twist, same as before.</p><p>Sakamoto’s had his hand on the door handle the whole time, and he throws it open as soon as the lock clicks, not even giving Akira a chance to pull her knife free before he’s planting a hand between her shoulder blades and shoving her inside. Akira stumbles in, falling against the table planted in the center of the tiny room. She turns and Sakamoto’s through the door behind her, just moving to push it shut, but—</p><p>The spiky metal fingers of one of the soldiers’ gauntlets curls around the lip of the door, shoving it back open with force enough to throw Sakamoto into the side wall. He sits up hastily, kicking his feet to propel him away as Akira scrambles back around the table and into the corner of the room, heart beating like it’s going to explode out of her chest.</p><p>They’re divided, the two of them, in opposite corners of the space as two more soldiers push into the room after the first. Akira can’t even <em>see </em>Sakamoto, now, just soldier number two bending down to lift him by his collar. She can hear him struggling, though, hissing curses at them as he kicks out at the guard’s chest plate, fists hammering against their forearms.</p><p>Soldier number three stays with them as number one turns their attention towards Akira. The room is small- three steps all it will take for the suit of armor to cross it. They get two before Akira is grabbing the vase from the side table she’d backed up against and throwing it in their face.</p><p>Predicably, it shatters against their helm, doing nothing to stop their advance.</p><p>They laugh lowly, “Oh, his Majesty will <em>like </em>breaking you in.”</p><p>A cold bolt of dread spikes in Akira’s gut and she moves, darting forwards and ducking the chuckling soldier’s grab at her. She springs up on the other side of his arm, shooting into a sprint towards the still-open door.</p><p>A blade thrusting out to bar the opening at throat level quickly brings her to heel—soldier number three, who had hung back with two.</p><p>Number one comes up behind her and wraps their fist around her bicep, grip tight as a blood pressure cuff, “Let me go!” She orders, furious and terrified as she yanks at her arm.</p><p>“What do we do with this one?” The soldier holding Sakamoto asks, turning just enough for Akira to see the teen, pushed up against the wall, teeth bared. The motion has his eyes snapping from the soldier gripping him to Akira and his expression shifts, transitioning quickly from anger to… something else. He thrashes violently in their hold, angry, strangled sounds seeping through his teeth as he claws at the hand locked around his collar.</p><p>“He isn’t worth the trouble,” Number one says easily, “Kill him.”</p><p>Sakamoto pales, “No, no, no, <em>nonononono- </em>you don’t want to—”</p><p>Number two snarls, then turns, and with a casual arc of his arm, tosses Sakamoto across the room. He lands in a heap a few feet away, while the soldier draws his sword and follows after him with slow, menacing steps, three following close behind.</p><p>Number one laughs again, moving to pull Akira further back into the room. His grip shifts, loosening thoughtlessly as he pulls her around him. Sakamoto must catch the slip, because his eyes snap to meet hers through a gap in the soldiers advancing on him.</p><p>He opens his mouth and yells, “<em>RUN!</em>”</p><p>Akira closes her eyes and kicks off the floor at an angle, wrenching her arm out of her captor’s grasp. She spins, and starts to run, and there’s the door- it’s right there, open as can be, but—</p><p> <strike>[ <em>“W h a t  a r e  y o u  d o i n g ?”</em> ]</strike></p><p>She hesitates.</p><p>A scream is ripped out of her as number one grabs her again, yanking her back as they tut at her disappointedly. With her arm firmly in one hand, they drag her to the door and slam it in her face, “No!” Sakamoto yells as the soldier spins Akira around to pin her against the wood, “Would you-” there’s a pained sound as one of the soldiers forces him to a kneel, “Just let her go!” He pleads.</p><p>Number one leans down to peer at Akira for a long moment. Finally, they sigh, longsuffering but inexplicably <em>fond</em>, before foisting her up and turning her over into a terrible pantomime of a hug. Akira wriggles in their grasp, pushing at their arms to predictably little effect, “Watch closely and learn, little flower,” The soldier says lowly, leaning back against the closed door as they lift her high enough to give her an angle on Sakamoto- putting her at a height enough for them to hook the chin of their helmet over her shoulder. Akira’s entire body is taught, tight, flailing limbs freezing as her breath is caged in her lungs.</p><p>She feels more than sees them nod towards their fellows, “This is what happens to slaves who can’t behave.”</p><p><em>     If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay quiet</em>.</p><p>Akira doesn’t dare <em>breathe</em>, let alone scream.</p><p>Sakamoto, meanwhile, is blubbering as number two drags the tip of their sword tauntingly across his neck. Begging them, “<em>Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease</em> no,” and, “I don’t wanna die, man!”</p><p>
  <strong>  <strike>[ <em>“W h a t  a r e  y o u  d o i n g ?”</em> ]</strike> </strong>
</p><p>Akira squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head at the pressure that settles on her temples. Around her middle, the soldier’s arms constrict in warning.</p><p>
  <strong>[<em> “W hy so s til l?” </em>]</strong>
</p><p>Akira’s head pounds.</p><p>
  <strong>[ <em>“Are you simply going to watch?” </em>]</strong>
</p><p>Something is…</p><p>
  <em>     Something is—</em>
</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Are you forsaking him to save yourself?”</em> </strong>
</p><p>Akira gasps, sharp and pained, at the voice that breaks through the cotton to echo in her head. Loud- so <em>loud—!</em></p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Death awaits him if you do nothing.”</em> </strong>
</p><p>“Would you stop playing with him!” The one at Akira’s back snaps.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Are you content to wait here idly while wickedness prevails, as so many did for you?”</em> </strong>
</p><p>Number two huffs, annoyed, but complies.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Answer me, child.”</em> </strong>
</p><p>“N-no…” Akira grits, forcing her eyes open, her head up.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “So I thought.”</em> </strong>
</p><p>Looming over Sakamoto, now, number two hefts their blade high.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Vow to me, then—I am thou, thou art I…”</em> </strong>
</p><p>Distantly, Akira is aware that… that <em>something </em>is emanating from her. An energy noticeable enough for number two to turn their blade from Sakamoto to her, for number one to tighten their grip.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Thou who art willing to shed the laws of mortals in the name of thine own justice.”</em> </strong>
</p><p>Akira’s breaths come fast as a weight settles over her chest. Her vision explodes into stars as the pressure on her temples mounts to something unbearable.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Show the strength of thy heart to ascertain all on thine own.”</em> </strong>
</p><p>A blue light blazes through her eyelids, energy licking at her skin as her glasses dissipate and something cold and smooth and solid settles over her face. Instinct has her reaching up blindly to grab it, to lock her fingers around it and <em>pull</em>.</p><p>
  <strong> <em>     “Call upon my name and release thy rage!”</em> </strong>
</p><p>The mask breaks free with a slick sound. The energy engulfs her.</p><p>Akira <em>screams</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*throws confetti* Persona time!</p><p>(I changed up the awakening dialogue, because after everything this Akira has been through, I didn't think she'd appreciate all the "committing all sacrilegious acts" &amp; "chained to hell itself" talk.)<br/> </p><p> </p><p> <sup><strike>I am once again coming to you to ask that you leave a comment</strike></sup></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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